Ah! James Bond. The pulse quickens, the heart beats faster. Expectation
permeates the air. It is difficult to believe how such a pedestrian sounding
name has come to hold the promise of some of life’s greatest adventures. For
aficionados and fans James Bond means many things. Fast cars and faster women.
Impeccably tailored clothes and fastidiously prepared martinis. An unabashed
political incorrectness in a sea of politically correct humanity. But most of
all he embodies an obsession with over equipped gadgets that make no excuses for
their outlandishness.
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Hollywood has had more than its shares of super heroes with fancy gadgets–all
the way from Dick Tracy to X-men. But no character or series has exemplified the
fixation with technology, as have the Bond movies.
And not all the Bond technologies have been a figment of someone’s
imagination. In You Only Live Twice (1967) Bond uses a small helicopter called
Little Nellie that is assembled out of four small suitcases. It was actually a
autogyro designed by an RAF engineer called Ken Wallis. It could fly for 47
hours non-stop and packed a wallop of hardware. In Thunderball (1965), he uses a
Jetpack designed by Bell Textron laboratories for the US army which was
seriously considering deploying it for combat soldiers. More recently, US Army
engineers sat down and watched Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies to come up
with the SmarTruck.
It started with a briefcase
It began innocuously enough. The original Ian Fleming books were totally low
tech. But in the first Bond movie (Dr No — 1961) producers Albert Broccoli and
Harry Saltzman introduced an incidental character called Geoffrey Boothroyd as
the armourer for Bond’s guns. In Russia with Love that character expanded a
little and in a 5 second screen appearance came to give Bond (played by Sean
Connery) a special briefcase. It hid a throwing knife, a foldable 0.25 calibre
rifle and had a powder box that would explode if the case was not opened
properly. It wasn’t strictly high tech — CIA agents in real life were
already using something similar. But those 5 seconds were to define the
character of all Bond films thereon. The public loved it and asked for more.
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The armourer became the quartermaster. The quartermaster became the famed Q.
For a brief time when critics of the early movies didn’t take too kindly to
the technology theme, producers tried experimenting with a more
"realistic" version of Bond. Both movies — Goldfinger and On His
Majesty’s Secret Service flopped. The public had come to love the larger than
life movies and the gizmos. Bond has never looked back since.
The villains loved the buttons too
One of the elements of Bond movies have been the larger than life villains
who rarely aspired to anything less than total world domination. The methods
they promised to use may sound convoluted but a lot of them were slight
exaggerations based on good theory.
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In Goldfinger (1964) Auric Goldfinger plans to detonate an atomic bomb in
Fort Knox on the premise that if all US Gold reserves were made radioactive the
price of his gold would skyrocket. While the theory is convoluted, it works.
Gold could pick up a neutron from the blast. However, the unstable form of gold
is more likely to turn into mercury than just remain radioactive. In OHMSS,
Ernst Stavro Blofeld decides to release the "Omega" virus that would
cause infertility in all living beings. That is eminently possible though it
would take more than one strain of virus to do that.
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There are examples galore. In Moonraker( 1979) Hugo Drax produces 50 globes
of nerve gas capable of killing earth’s entire population. But would for some
reason leave animals untouched! Of course we have since learnt of nerve agents
like Tabun, Soman and VX though none of them is so selectively partial toward
animals. In A View to a Killi (1985) Max Zorin decides to demolish silicon
valley by causing an earthquake so he can take control of the microchip
industry. Again — that’s a workable idea. A five megaton underground nuclear
explosion can release seismic waves that measure 6.9 on the Richter scale.
Though of course, they wouldn’t travel too far.
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Increasing sophistication
In recent times of course the technology has become sleeker. The laser watch
and zoom camera with a communications uplink in Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye.
The remote controlled BMW (again workable in theory) and high tech palm top in
The World is Not Enough. The long standing Bond theme of miniaturization that
put Geiger machines and Piton Laser guns in wrist watches. Few people even
question how many of these are workable technologies.
Bond’s lasting legacy however is not just smart technologies that may or
not may not work. It is the off-hand manner in which he used them. A sense of
life that seemed to say anything is possible. Here’s to James Bond and to
unlimited possibilities!
TV Mahalingam with Sarita Rani in Bangalore
Bond Gadgets
Ahead of Their Time
The pager
In From Russia with Love released in 1963, Bond carries a pager that beeps
off alerting him that Universal Exports (the cover for MI6) is trying to contact
him. Big deal, today’s mobile readers might contend! The catch is that the
term "pager" itself was first used in 1959, referring to a Motorola
radio communications product and the first consumer pager (as we know it) was
Motorola’s Pageboy I, introduced in 1974, nearly a decade after 007 used it.
Submarine communication
In For Your Eyes Only (1981), the ATAC (Automatic Targeting Attack
Communicator) was a device that used an ultra low frequency coded transmission
to order submarines to launch ballistic missiles. Communication between
submerged submarines and radios on the surface had been one of the biggest
challenges of military engineering in the 20th century. Around the time of the
release of the movie, a stop gap solution was discovered by using ultra low
frequency transmission.
The car phone
In the same movie, Bond uses a sleek car phone to talk to MI6. The crux is
that the first car phone was released in Stockholm in 1956 and it was the size
of a suitcase and weighed 40 kilos. No such clunky gadgets for Bond! Also, the
commercial first car-phone service, was introduced in Britain in 1965, a good 12
years after the release of From Russia with Love.
Reusable rockets
In the You Only Live Twice (1967), the infamous SPECTRE possessed a reusable
rocket called Bird 1, which stood 65 feet tall and took off like a conventional
space rocket, and landed on four retractable pedestals. At that point of time,
the idea of a reusable rocket seemed like a joke but the NASA working prototype
designed in the mid 90s has a striking resemblance with Bird 1.
In-car GPS
In Goldfinger (1964), Bond’s favorite Aston Martin DB5 is equipped with an
onboard radar screen for tracking a large homing device with a range of 150
miles. It can safely be considered as the precursor to GPS and in-car
navigating.
Real life: Cutting Edge Bond Movie Technology
The Aston Martin DB5
The mother of all Bond gadgets — this Q- modeled device was perhaps the
best known of 007’s devices after the Walther PPK. The first customized Bond
car, the Aston Martin was bullet proofed with revolving English, French and
Swiss license plates. The car also sported a pipe that could emit smoke to throw
off pursuers and had Ben Hur like tyre deflators on the left-hand side back
wheel. More dogged chasers were treated to an oil slick! Hidden behind the
parking lights were .30 calibre retractable twin machine guns. Camouflaged
underneath the gear stick top was a little red button that fired the passenger
ejector, just in case! The car was also equipped with an onboard radar screen
for tracking homing devices across the world.
Recently, the US army announced to come out with a ‘SmarTruck’ rigged
with bulletproof glass, grenade launcher, a laser gun and the ability to throw
off pursuers with oil slicks and smoke screens. "Engineers sat down and
watched Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies and some of the other Bond films to
create gadgets for this vehicle like the electrified door handle, or the
bullet-proof wind screens, or the smoke screens," says John Cork, author of
"James Bond, The Legacy."
Attaché case
The first Bond gadget customized by Q’s lab, this innocuous looking
suitcase was featured only in From Russia With Love (1963). A standard issue to
all 007 agents, the normal sized case included an exploding tear gas canister
that went off if the locks were opened normally. Also included in the kit were a
flat throwing knife that could pop out of the side of the case, a collapsible
AR-7 sniper rifle with an infra-red scope and rifle ammunition concealed in
steel tubes and 50 gold sovereigns. In real life, simple exploding suitcases or
briefcases with hidden compartments were standard equipment for the CIA during
World War II.
The jetpack
In Thunderball (1965), Bond is gets out of a sticky situation by strapping
on a jetpack and flying over a mansion to land next to his Aston Martin DB5. In
fact, 007 is so pleased with this gadget that he remarks, "No well dressed
man should be without one".
The jetpack used during the filming of the movie was a real one manufactured
by Bell Textron Laboratories for the US army. During the early 1960’s the U.S.
military seriously considered these devices as potential aids to combat
soldiers. However, the low duration of the rocket fuel required for the belt was
found to be too short-lived for the device to be practical and the idea was
abandoned.
The first public demonstration was made by the Army at Fort Eustice,
Virginia, on June 8, 1961.
One of these devices was even used at the 1984 Olympic Games but the
technology really never took off.
Q’s pet
A remote controlled robot with cameras that acted as its ‘eyes’, Qs pet
appeared in A View To A Kill (1985). The head of the robot could also be
extended upwards to see what was going on above ground level. It also was also
equipped with a microphone. Q uses this to track 007 only to find him in a
shower with a woman.
Such robots have only now become common and were used to explore the debris
and track down survivors of the World Trade Center last year.
The digital watch
In Live and Let Die (1973), Bond is spotted wearing a digital watch. Big
deal, you might say. But considering the fact that the World’s first digital
watch was a Hamilton Pulsar, that available for sale in stores only in 1972 for
a price of $2100, Bond was really on to the bleeding edge tech. Also, the Pulsar
when released had a serious battery problem, which required users to change
batteries in a matter of a few minutes. Nobody saw Bond taking a break to do any
such thing!
Little Nellie
In You Only Live Twice (1967), Q assembles before a stunned ‘Tiger’
Tanaka a mini helicopter called Little Nellie out of four little suitcases. 007
takes off on the ‘Litte Nellie’, to battle the bad guys over Blofeld’s
volcano. Little Nellie is armed to the teeth with twin forward-facing machine
guns, rocket launchers, rear-firing flame-throwers, aerial mines, and
heat-seeking missiles. In reality, Little Nellie was not a helicopter but an
autogyro. It was a Wallis WA-116 also known as a gyroplane. And carrying all
that hardware was no problem for little Nellie as it could lift 3.14 times her
own weight. For the movie, the inventor of the gyroplane flew for 47 hours, up
to heights of 10,000 feet.
The Weird Ones
Underwater breather
Featured in Thunderball (1965), the miniature underwater breather allows the
user to breathe underwater for about four minutes. In fact, the device looked so
convincing in the movie that the British Royal Navy approached the producers of
the movie to know more about it. Unfortunately, till day there is no such
miniature device that allows underwater breathing.
Shark attractor
Featured in Never Say Never Again (1983), what it did was rather simple.
Attach it to a target, activate it and watch it being devoured by sharks. In
theory, this was possible because like whales and dolphins sharks are tuned into
very low-frequency electric fields. These devices can confuse the shark to
thinking that the target is actually dying or injured fish making low frequency
sounds.
X -ray glasses
Featured in The World Is Not Enough (1999), these chic looking glasses use
X-rays to allow 007 in viewing concealed weapons and lingerie. The fact of the
matter is that are most widely used in medicine to view internal organs and
using them to view undergarments is stretching things a bit too far. However, an
alternative could be hand-held ultrasound devices, which could help people study
the contours.
3-D identigraph
Featured in For Your Eyes Only (1981), the 3D Identigraph enabled a person
to type in commands to build up a picture of a person’s face. Once a match was
found the details where displayed on the screen and the image was printed out.
Weird but possible!
Underwater propulsion unit
Featured in Thunderball (1965), an outrageously over equipped device that
had spear guns, a propulsion unit, explosive bottles, yellow ink screen and even
headlights! Sad that 007 blows it up to kill some baddies.
Imitation fingerprints
Featured in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), it allows the user to fool a finger
print identification device. Nowadays, prints fabricated from household
ingredients can beat biometric security systems.
Electro-magnetic RPM controller
Featured in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), its a gambler’s dream comes true!
You simply slip this gadget over your finger and then head towards the nearest
automatic gambling machine. When pressure is applied on the gadget, it rigs the
gambling consoles causing them to throw up jackpots.
XT-7B rockets
Featured in Never Say Never Again (1983), these rockets acted as human
missiles. Once they were fired the normal way, the outer casing would fall away
to reveal a gas powered platform with a person standing on it. In reality, such
speeds would just snap the neck of the person within it.
Miscellaneous
Other famous Bond movie ‘gadgets’ included:
n Poison tipped
spiked shoe,
n A watch that had
a wire hidden inside and could double up as a garrote
n A snorkel suit
which had a stuffed seagull on top
n An edible
radioactive device
n A bowler hat
that could be used a lethal discus
n A safe cracker
that could be used also as a copier
n A flute that
could act as a transmitter
n An imitation
nipple
n A watch that
receive ticker tape messages
n A time bomb pen
n A craft that was
designed to look like a crocodile
TV Mahalingam and Sarita Rani